Timesharing and crack is whack

It was the Spring of 2001 and New York City was still swelling with tourists. I'd quit my job as a junior waiter at a restaurant near Carnegie Hall after a run in with a pair of gay musicians from L.A. who complained to management that I'd given them inferior service and therefore they weren't going to pay their check. My inferior service? I'd asked if I could transfer them to another waiter when I was supposed to go off shift at 10p.m....simply because I'd been there since 9:30 in the morning!! I quit on the spot rather than pay for their meal out of my tips, telling my coke-snorting manager where he could stuff his coconut shrimp in the process just to make SURE there was no way I could ever show my face at the corners of 56th and 7th streets ever again.

But pride alone never paid anyone's rent so I was in need of another job--fast. If I hadn't been in such dire need, I doubt I would have accepted the gig as a timeshare salesgirl, in charge of luring tourists in for a two-hour presentation in exchange for Broadway tickets or restaurant vouchers. I mean, I'd hated cold-calling the 2 hours I'd spent as a telemarketer, so I didn't really think I'd enjoy cold-face-to-facing much more.

And I didn't. It was horrible. Despite my short blonde bob, and perky face. Despite my carefully chosen 1960's Gidget-esque skirts and blouses, and well-rehearsed speeches...I never managed to bring in ONE SINGLE FREAKING COUPLE in the two months I worked in timeshares. Which meant I was making NO MONEY, of course, and I probably would have starved to death if my weird, one-eyed Polish boss hadn't bought me lunch every day because he felt sorry for me. He also got me a job in a dive bar down in the Village that paid quite well--thusly allowing me to pay my rent--on the condition that I give the timeshare thing at least two months before I quit.

He'd been POSITIVE I was going to start bringing in the big bucks. He said he'd never seen someone who looked so wholesomely All American fail in the Timeshare business. Guess he didn't bargain on the big bad city making all the tourists certain my very wholesomeness was part of a wicked plot to lure them into a back alley and steal all of their travellers' checks and maybe their children as well. The looks I received from people those two months were among some of the most scornful and hate-filled of my life. It made the time Edward Albee told his casting assistant I was 'too fat to play a teenager'--as if ALL teenagers are thin, even if I wasn't wearing a size 2 at the time--look like a walk in the park.

I was so miserable about my day job that I took to staying a little too late at my night job, drowning my sorrows with the largely Polish population of the dive bar and the former lead singer of America who I drunkenly told how much I loved the songs from 'The Last Unicorn' as he tried to convince me in a very sad, old, alchoholic way to come back to his place and sleep with a legend. This soon became incredibly depressing as well, so I ended up quitting both the day and the night job and taking a low paying summer theatre gig in upstate New York. I would barely be making enough to clear my rent back in the city, but the lodging was free and I was needing a break from all things timeshare or alchohol oriented or involving people who spoke an eastern European language I didn't understand.

Sigh....I could go on from there, but I *think* that was the worst job I ever had. Though the cocktail waitressing at a jazz club that left me partially deaf and forced me to ride the N train late enough at night that it was only me and the rats hanging out on the platform was pretty bad....and the job as the personal assistant to an ex-con who made internet greeting cards wasn't very much fun...and the movie where the producer was arrested by the IRS in the middle of filming, thusly freezing the funds intended to pay the starving actors was fairly sucky...and...

God! I can't believe, just days ago, I was thinking stepmommying was the hardest job I'd ever had. I must have been smoking crack to forget all those other jobs.

And as we all know--crack is whack.

Peace--

Anna J. Evans

http://laughoutloudsexy.com
Blogging at http://annajevans.blogspot.com